Executive director Ed Mate likes to say, only half-jokingly, that the “C” in the CGA organization he represents not only stands for Colorado, but for Caddie.

There are numerous reasons there’s some truth in that for the CGA and for Mate.

As he noted in a recent interview with We Are Golf, “Caddying embodies some of the most important and fundamental attributes of our sport that make it great. Golf is a game of a lifetime and caddying puts young and old together to share it. Golf promotes health and wellness and caddies make it more enjoyable for adults to walk and gets kids outside and away from their video screens. Golf is a social game; show me a group of four golfers with four caddies and I will show you eight people having a great time.”

In addition, the Solich Caddie & Leadership Academy is a cornerstone initiative at CommonGround Golf Course, which is owned and operated by the CGA.

But the association’s commitment to caddying extends well beyond CommonGround. That was evident on Monday, when the CGA conducted its annual Caddie Summit for the seventh time, in this case at Denver Country Club. Clubs and courses with caddies programs from around the state met to exchange ideas, chat about subjects integral to caddying, see caddie trends in Colorado and listen to a few topic-appropriate speakers.

And this year, featured was a high-quality VIDEO — produced by Columbine Country Club — which focuses on the value of caddying and the full tuition and housing Evans Scholarship for caddies. It was filmed at Columbine and at the University of Colorado Evans Scholars house. Columbine had a once-thriving caddie program which produced numerous Evans Scholars before that program largely went by the wayside. But it’s been resurrected in the 21st century and is once again successful.

The CGA sees enough value in this annual Caddie Summit that it — through the Colorado Golf Foundation, which supports Colorado-based programs and organizations that use golf to build important life skills and character — awards a caddie grant of $500 to each club which attends with multiple representatives.

On Monday, 19 of the more than 20 caddie clubs/courses in Colorado were expected to participate in the Summit. Overall, nearly 70 people were in attendance, after 50 being the norm in recent years.

“If anybody sat through this session and was asked how do you measure the health of caddie programs and the enthusiasm, it’s the highest it’s ever been — absolutely,” Mate said. “The video we saw from Columbine, the attendance today, the energy level … we’re on the upswing for sure.”

Indeed, the Caddie Summit seems to be paying dividends — or at least helping the cause. The number of caddie/forecaddie rounds in Colorado — which is tracked by a survey the CGA sends to caddie clubs and courses — has been trending up in recent years. In 2017, that number hit almost 40,000 as a total of 39,919 were reported.

“The more loops for the kids, the more summer jobs — healthy jobs — there are for youths,” said Janene Guzowski, who chairs the CGA Caddie Development Committee and has been a director for the Western Golf Association (which administers the Evans Scholarship) for about eight years. “In the end, it can lead to a scholarship if everything else falls into place and they apply for an Evans Scholarship and have all the qualfications.

“For me, the more kids that are on the course learning how to talk to adults and being on time at 7:30 in the morning, learning accountability … it’s all good. It’s better than flipping burgers or mowing lawns.”

The fact that the CGA tracks the number of caddie rounds in Colorado puts it in better position than many states, said Tim Orbon (left), the manager of caddies and scholarship development for the WGA. “That data is awesome.”

Though the number of caddie loops has headed upward in the Caddie Summit survey, Mate is reluctant to draw any conclusions at this point. But he likes the fact that the data is being gathered.

“It’s too short a line to really see a trend,” said Mate, himself a former caddie — at Denver Country Club — and an Evans Scholars alum. “We’re asking the right questions and we actually have a number. If you don’t have a number, how do you measure? You can’t manage what you don’t measure. Let’s track it and get our clubs to report rounds consistently.”

Orbon was the keynote speaker for Monday’s Caddie Summit, providing updates on the Evans Scholarship, the new “Carry the Game” youth initiative designed to create lifelong golfers through caddying, and on the WGA’s Caddie Academies. At the Academies, for seven weeks each summer, participants caddie at courses in the Chicago area while living together in a community. Orbon also gave some tips on how to build caddie programs and make them thrive.

“When you have a speaker like Tim, whose enthusiasm and passion for caddie programs is really intoxicating, that was like a coach motivating a team,” Mate said. “The whole day is about getting people enthused, and I think we accomplished that for sure.”

Orbon was one of two WGA staff members on hand for Monday’s Caddie Summit. Director of the West Region Bill Moses was also in attendance. Moses was planning to visit the CU Evans Scholars house in Boulder later in the day.

Sixty-two caddies were on the Evans Scholarship at CU starting the school year, among the 965 current Evans Scholars nationwide.
 

Caddying may no longer be in its heyday, and Colorado isn’t one of its hotbeds, but that doesn’t mean it’s a relic of a bygone era in golf. It simply means that it needs consistent nurturing to maintain a significance presence in Colorado golf.

That’s part of the idea behind Colorado’s Caddie Summit, which was held for the fifth consecutive year on Thursday, this time at Colorado Golf Club in Parker.

About 50 people, many of them officials from golf courses and clubs in Colorado that feature caddie programs, attended Thursday’s Summit, sharing data, best practices and, of course, a love for caddying.

The Summit helps keep caddying a priority, so it doesn’t wither on the vine.

“To me, you’ve got to continue to put the effort in,” said Ed Mate, executive director of the CGA, which organizes the Caddie Summit. “Caddying is not the path of least resistance. It’s not like the things at a club that you don’t need to push, that you don’t need to promote; they’ll just be fine. You don’t need to promote golf carts. People are going to take them. And if you’re not careful, they’ll take them too much. So just to maintain (the amount of caddie activity there is in Colorado) is success because it’s not the path of least resistance.”

Mate points to the example of John Ogden, the head golf professional at Cherry Hills Country Club, which has the largest caddie program in the state, with about 180 “core caddies” racking up a joint total of roughly 12,500 rounds per year.

“John works every day pushing and promoting,” noted Mate, a former caddie who earned the Evans Scholarship for caddies at the University of Colorado.

Cherry Hills sets the standard for caddie programs in Colorado, but they come in all sizes. A total of 24 programs exist in Colorado, meaning about 10 percent of the courses in the state have one. They range from producing 50 caddie loops per year at The First Tee of Denver at City Park Golf Course to the 12,500 annual loops at Cherry Hills. Eight clubs had at least 1,000 caddie loops in 2015: Cherry Hills (12,500), Ballyneal (6,300), Colorado Golf Club (3,219), Castle Pines Golf Club (2,600), Maroon Creek Club (2,199), Denver Country Club (1,700) Columbine Country Club (1,500) and Eagle Springs Golf Club (1,400).

Most of the caddie programs are at private clubs, but some are at resorts, and a few are at public courses, including CommonGround (the Solich Caddie & Leadership Academy), and The First Tee of Green Valley Ranch and The First Tee of Denver. The Solich Academy, which incentivizes taking caddies by paying for all of the caddies’ base fees, produced 970 caddie loops last year in its fourth season of existence. Spinoffs of the Solich Academy currently exist at Meridian Golf Club and at Fort Collins Country Club.

In all, the 24 caddie clubs in Colorado produced 37,913 loops in 2015, which was down about 1.4 percent compared to 2014. The average number of “core caddies” at the participating Colorado clubs and courses is 26. A dozen clubs have some “professional” caddies, but the majority of caddies at the state’s courses and clubs are teenagers.

As for the Summit, Mate believes it’s a very worthwhile annual event.

“It’s just sort of settled into a really good rhythm,” he said. “You’ve got to do this every year. My hope is that everyone comes away with a few notes that they’ll be able to try. But the main objective is just to keep it on the radar, to keep them accountable a little bit. ‘Oh yeah, we have a caddie program. Oh, I’ve attended this Summit, so I better do something about it.'”

To keep the Caddie Summit going strong, each caddie club or course that brings at least three attendees receives $500 from the Colorado Golf Foundation for its caddie program. Several years ago, the lead gift for the Foundation was provided by CU Evans Scholar alum George Solich.

Evans Scholarship a Big Incentive for Some: For some Colorado teenagers, besides caddying providing extra cash in the summer, it also brings with it the possibility of a full tuition and housing scholarship to the University of Colorado. The Evans Scholarship for caddies, potentially worth about $80,000 if renewed for four years, is awarded to selected high-achieving caddies with significant financial need.

The scholarship has produced 10,184 alums over the last 86 years, including 441 at CU. Approximately 910 Evans Scholars are currently enrolled across the country — including about 50 at CU — and roughly 260 scholarships are expected to be awarded for the incoming class of 2016-17, including 11 to Coloradans. The average grade-point average for Evans Scholars is 3.2, and the program graduates 95 percent of its caddies.

Nationwide, the Evans Scholarship spends about $16 million each year on scholarship and housing costs. And since the scholarship’s inception, the total cost has been about $330 million.

The CU Evans Scholars house recently underwent a $6 million renovation and expansion. A formal dedication for the house in Boulder is planned for April 16.

One of the CU Evans Scholar alums is Geoff “Duffy” Solich (left), who recently became the Western Golf Association’s state chairman for Colorado, succeeding Bob Webster. The WGA, which has long partnered with the CGA and CWGA in supporting and sponsoring the Evans Scholars at CU, adminsters the scholarship nationwide. The Solich Caddie & Leadership Academy at CommonGround is named for George and Duffy Solich.

Six Coloradans recently became new directors for the WGA, helping the association support the Evans Scholars Foundation and conduct its four championships, including the PGA Tour’s BMW Championship. The six incoming directors from Colorado are Don Law (Cherry Hills Country Club), Bob Lazzeri (Columbine Country Club), Eric Miller (Colorado Golf Club), Tim Morris (Denver Country Club), Frank Nessinger of Denver and Jeremy Stroiman (Boulder Country Club). Several of the newcomers are former Evans Scholars.

In all, the WGA has more than 500 directors.

Caddie Central: Colorado Golf Club is a hot spot on the caddie agenda in 2016. In January, it hosted the Evans Scholars selection meeting for Colorado. On Tuesday, the Caddie Summit took place at the Parker Club. And on Oct. 3, the Evans Cup of Colorado fundraising tournament for the Evans Scholars will take place at the club that hosted the 2013 Solheim Cup and the 2010 Senior PGA Championship.

Holding the annual Colorado Caddie Summit at Columbine Country Club on Wednesday seemed fitting.

There are Colorado golf courses with caddie programs that have been around far longer than the one at Columbine. And there are certainly bigger and more prominent ones.

But few, if any, clubs in the state feature caddie programs that have gone through the odyssey that the one at Columbine has.

In the 1960s, ’70s and into the early ’80s, Columbine had one of the top half-dozen or so caddie programs in Colorado. (The club hosted the 1967 PGA Championship, making it one of just two Colorado courses — along with Cherry Hills — that has held one of the PGA Tour’s Grand Slam events.) On weekends during the summer, it wasn’t unusual for 40 teenagers per day to show up for a caddie draw — in order to be placed in a manageable order — in hopes of getting a loop. And most did. (Full disclosure: I was a caddie at Columbine in the 1970s, and the caddiemaster there in the late ’70s and very early ’80s.)

Columbine produced eight winners of the Evans Caddie Scholarship from the ’60s through the early ’80s, during the time Tony Novitsky was the head professional at the club. The Evans Scholar recipients received full tuition and housing at the University of Colorado.

But unlike at places such as Cherry Hills and Denver Country Club and a few others, the caddie program at Columbine didn’t have an uninterrupted run over decades and decades and decades. Columbine’s program largely fell by the wayside — with a few individual exceptions — for quite a while during the late 20th century. But the story didn’t end there.

In 2002, Tom Alley revived the caddie program at Columbine, and with the support of Alley, Geoff “Duffy” Solich and others, the numbers have climbed to about 25-30 “core” caddies at Columbine last year, when roughly 1,200 caddie loops were done at the course. That’s up from the 1,100-plus the club reported in 2013. Columbine is one of just eight clubs in the state that produced more than 1,000 caddie loops in 2014, joining Cherry Hills (10,000), Castle Pines Golf Club (8,000), Ballyneal (7,000), Colorado Golf Club (3,044), Maroon Creek Club (2,199), Denver Country Club (1,600) and Eagle Springs (1,450).

“Having a couple members who were Evans Scholars or Western Golf Association leaders (Solich and Alley) has been huge,” noted Bryan Heim, the head golf professional at Columbine the last couple of years. “It’s not as big a program as say, Cherry Hills, but it’s definitely growing from a grassroots level. You look at other clubs that have professional caddies or college kids that come back. We’re really in that 14-18 (year-old range). That’s what I mean by grassroots.

“There’s a camp among the members that’s probably indifferent to (the caddie program), then there’s a really strong core that supports it 100 percent. It’s growing, it’s evolved and it’s gotten better.”

Solich and his brother, George, are CU Evans Scholar alums who lent their name to the Solich Caddie & Leadership Academy at CommonGround Golf Course. Like Alley, the Soliches are directors for the WGA, which administers the Evans Scholarship nationwide.

Caddie Summit Notes: About 50 people from golf courses in Colorado withstood adverse weather and driving conditions to attend the fourth annual Colorado Caddie Summit on Wednesday.

Results of the yearly survey of caddie clubs were distributed and discussed, and various club officials shared what they do to make their caddie programs successful, hitting topics such as recruiting, training and supporting/promoting their programs. There was an update on the Solich Caddie & Leadership Academy at CommonGround — where taking caddies is incentivized through the program paying for all of the caddies’ base fees; and Evans Scholars-related briefings from WGA director and state chairman Bob Webster and from WGA staffer Bill Moses.

“It’s just a great exchange of information and I always come away with a full notepad of ideas,” said Ed Mate, executive director of the CGA, which organizes the Caddie Summit. “The numbers (of attendees) were down a little bit from last year, I think mainly because of the weather. But I do think it’s important that we do this every year just as a reminder. It’s a motivator for everyone, and if you come away with one or two ideas, those can make all the difference in the world in making your program successful.”

The total number of reported caddie loops statewide in 2014 was 39,290, with Denver Country Club noting an increase of about 400 over 2013. A total of 22 clubs reported having caddie programs in 2014, whether with less than 10 core caddies or 180. While most are private or resort facilities, there are some at public courses, including the Solich Academy at CommonGround, and the First Tee Programs of Green Valley Ranch and of Denver.
 

Or, at least, so the thinking goes.

But while caddies in the U.S. are certainly less prevalent than they were 50 or 75 years ago, they’re far from disappearing. In fact, in Colorado the numbers reflect a slight upswing in their usage in recent years.

And, by the looks of things at the third annual Colorado Caddie Summit, held Tuesday at Lakewood Country Club, there’s certainly some room for hope for those who care about a venerable institution of golf.

For the second straight year, about 70 people gathered for the event, many representing a variety of Colorado clubs that utilize caddies. Some have huge programs, some very small, but they all think enough of caddies that they take time out of their busy schedules to meet for about four hours and share data, best practices and other information that assure that this golf tradition will continue in the modern era.

“I think we’ve had some pretty good movement with the health and growth of caddie programs in the state,” George Solich, one of the namesakes for the Solich Caddie & Leadership Academy at CommonGround Golf Course, noted earlier this year.

And the Colorado Caddie Summit has helped in that regard. Attendance at the event has grown by multiples since the inaugural summit was held two years ago.

“This Caddie Summit has been a big, big factor in the whole deal because it’s brought awareness to a lot of clubs, a lot of golf professionals, a lot of members within clubs in the state,” said John Ogden, the head professional at Cherry Hills Country Club, which features one of the largest and most successful caddie programs in the state. “It’s been a slow, grass-roots program. This is the third (summit) we’ve had. I remember the first one, two years ago at Denver Country Club, we just had two or three tables (of people). We had it last year at Cherry Hills and it’s just kind of expanded.

“You get more and more people involved — just get them here and hear the stories — and I’ll tell you what, that’s been the key factor in the whole thing. That’s created some momentum, in my opinion.”

More than 20 golf clubs in the state include caddie programs, and the ranks are growing gradually. For instance, Columbine Country Club in Littleton had a thriving caddie program decades ago. But after it died out, it’s been revived in the new millennium and in 2013 it produced more than 1,100 caddie loops.

In addition, the overall number of caddie loops reported in Colorado is on an uptick. The total shared with the CGA through the 2013 caddie survey was 32,085, a 2.7 percent increase over 2012.

“The feel and the vibe and the energy and the excitement around caddies is exponentially greater than when I started working for the CGA,” said Ed Mate, executive director of the CGA and a former caddie himself. “It’s night and day. Look at Columbine Country Club. That’s a great example. Year over year, I think we’re continuing to see positive momentum, but in the last 20 years, it’s unbelievable how much we’ve seen.”

Cherry Hills is among the clubs that has seen growth. It’s always had a large caddie program, but in the last six or seven years, it has gone from seeing 27 percent of all its rounds featuring a caddie, to seeing that number jump close to 50 percent, according to Ogden.

All of that certainly doesn’t mean caddie usage is suddenly going to skyrocket in Colorado. With carts often providing a major revenue stream for clubs, and with the cost of taking a caddie usually exceeding that of using a cart, there are some non-deniable headwinds. But with some commitment from golf traditionalists — and those who believe that caddying can teach kids invaluable lessons — some headway can be made at the margin.

“We’ve gotten a number of additional clubs who are interested in giving (caddie programs) a try,” said Bob Webster, state chairman for the Western Golf Association, which sponsors the Evans Caddie Scholarship. “Whether that ultimately catches on (and there’s a significant resurgence in caddying), time will tell.”

What may help give caddying in Colorado a lift is the fact that the 2014 BMW Championship PGA Tour event is being played at Cherry Hills in the first week of September. The WGA runs the BMW Championship and all of the tournament’s proceeds benefit the Evans Scholars Foundation. In other words, more than any other week on the PGA Tour, caddies are at the forefront during the BMW Championship.

“The P.R. that will be done at the BMW and on TV with the BMW Championship will help open some eyes as far as the benefits of caddying and the possibility of being an Evans Scholar,” said Webster, himself an Evans Scholar alum. “I would be very surprised if we didn’t see a surge next spring — a year from now — in the number of kids going to clubs wanting to caddie.”

The CGA and CWGA, being partners with the WGA in the support of the Evans Scholars and the scholarship house at the University of Colorado, are particularly cognizant of the spark the BMW Championship can produce for caddying in the state.

“It’s a great opportunity to draft and use the bully-pulpit of that kind of exposure to talk about caddying and the Evans Scholarship,” Mate said. “It’s just going to raise awareness; it’s that simple.”

The Evans Scholarship pays full tuition and housing for each recipient. If renewed for four years, it’s estimated to be worth more than $70,000. To be considered for an Evans Scholarship, applicants must have excellent and extensive caddie records, very strong academic results, show outstanding character and leadership, and demonstrate financial need.

In another sign that caddying might be on an upward trend in Colorado, both the number of Colorado teenagers awarded the Evans Scholarship this year (14) and the number of applicants (43) matched or exceeded the most in more than two decades.

But beyond such possibilities, Ogden sees another benefit of bolstering caddie programs.

“With all the data on people getting out of golf and that sort of thing, a lot of that kind of corresponds to the dying of the caddie programs,” he said. “So if you can slowly bring that back — you can’t do it overnight, but you can make small steps — you can make a difference. If you get the young kids exposed to golf, more than likely they’re going to start playing.”